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Keanu Reeves, superhero? Marvel really, really wants him to join the MCU

The studio talks to the actor "for almost every film we make," Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige says.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read
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Keanu in the MCU? He does know kung fu from his Matrix days, after all.

Pain heals, and chicks dig scars, but glory lasts forever, Keanu Reeves once told us in The Replacements. Sounds like the perfect motto for a Marvel superhero.

And Reeves, who's having a most excellent and not at all bogus 2019, could join that super-powered universe. A reporter for CNET sister site ComicBook.com asked Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige if the company was planning anything involving Reeves, and indeed, strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

"We talk to him for almost every film we make," Feige said. "I don't know when, if, or ever he'll join the MCU , but we very much want to figure out the right way to do it."

Which hero would he play? Due to Reeves' love of motorcycles, some suggest Ghost Rider.

But many would like to see Reeves as Adam Warlock, who was created by researchers to be the pinnacle of future human evolution. 

"Adam Warlock was designed to be the most perfect human and everybody can agree that Keanu Reeves is already the most perfect human there is," wrote one Twitter user.

Others suggest Reeves should be cast as everyone from Silver Surfer to Gambit to Moon Knight.

Reeves has made headlines this year for everything from his starring action part in John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum to his role as a motorcycle daredevil toy in Toy Story 4 to his upcoming role in the Cyberpunk 2077 video game to a meme-worthy appearance in Netflix movie Always Be My Maybe.

There's also an online petition, with more than 34,000 signatures at press time, urging Time Magazine to make Reeves its person of the year.

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Originally published June 19.